The Shades of London Dictionary
by MythScavenger
Summary: A series of vignettes in alphabetical order. [Canon events are tragically abused, elaborated upon, in some cases ignored, etc.; coauthored with Illyria Lives; various ships. SPOILERS for both books.]
1. A-E

***Coauthored with Illyria Lives, or dearsummerdiary as she is known on Tumblr. **

***Various ships included are Stephen/Rory, Callum/Boo, and at the moment I'm typing this, a dash of Jerome/Rory.**

***Some language.**

***SPOILERS.**

_A: Applause_

Rory was at a pub.

How she ended up at the pub was beyond her.

Well, wait, she remembered. It had been a week – or two – some days since Stephen's funeral and since they found him. Not him, exactly, but a _deadyetnotdead_ him that followed them around and spoke in soft tones with a lot of ellipses as he tried to feed his solid thoughts to his vestigial mouth.

And Boo and Callum had wanted to get drunk, and she and Stephen wanted to hold hands but they couldn't, and they wanted to stay close - but like hell were they going to risk that in a pub, so Stephen was waiting outside-

And why was she being led up to the stage? She didn't want to go up there.

"Go on, Rory! You'll be fine!" Boo cheered her on as she dumbly walked up the stairs. Callum gave her a thumbs-up. They were being jostled by the crowd, but didn't appear to mind.

_I am drunk_, she blatantly thought as she was handed a microphone. The beat of some old Spice Girls song began to pump through the speakers.

_I don't even like karaoke._

But, as if she was a puppet and her puppeteer was ol' Drunk, Wasted, and Etc., himself, she sang. And sang.

And through one of the pub's windows, Stephen towered above the Living, a ghost that was clapping for her till the last note.

_B: Bones_

Boo put on her bravest face as the hanging skeleton drooped one arm over her bare shoulder, plastic-y and hollow, drifting horribly smooth. She shuddered and realized that her bravest face was the face of a pissing scared ten year old by the way that Callum was looking at her, with laughter in his eyes.

"Don't say a word," she warned him, flinching again as another skeleton dropped from the ceiling as a mechanized voice moaned her nickname, scaring the group of costumed children just ahead of them. For all she had seen of ghosts, of car wrecks, and of nightmares of what it would be like to have died as a building caved in around her, there was something about the emptiness of a skeleton's eyes and smile that she was never able to climb over. But she was a big girl, and — _oh shit that one got really close._

She leaned away from it, heart hammering away beneath her frankly amazing witch costume (not that anyone had cared to compliment her on it). Callum outright laughed, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and pulling her close to his side.

"I've gotcha," he said, and a few girls looked on at them in jealousy as they made their way through the rest of the haunted house. "No need to fear!"

She glared at him as best as she could, but she never left the warmth of his side for the rest of the night, bones shaking and clattering in their wake.

_C: Close Call_

"You forgot that it was Boo's birthday tomorrow, didn't you?"

"Shut the hell up, Stephen!" Rory snapped, turning around at the Shade who stood behind her. She had had a bad day. A bad week. A bad month. Might even go so far as to say a bad life.

And she definitely did not need Stephen Dene condescending her on today. She had made a low grade on that major test she had studied hours for, and also had a small, now meaningless, spat with Jazza.

Stephen's mouth turned down at the edges; the only sign of Rory's command making an impact. "It isn't the end of the world." He, almost self-consciously, it seemed, crossed his arms. "I'll come with you to-"

She shoved by him, _because he was blocking the door_ she later told herself, and not simply because of her frustration at the world suddenly deciding to be against her.

Some hours, a cheap gift hurriedly bought, and a make-out session with Jerome later, Rory found herself back at the Shades' flat. Again.

"It was a call about an abusive boyfriend. The bastard's bullet didn't hit any vital organs, though," Boo reported over Callum's string of obscenities in the background.

Rory paced the floor, almost numbly.

"He should be, you know, fine, yeah?" Boo tried again.

"I was so angry with him earlier, though-"

"We all get mad at him, don't worry," Callum managed to pause in his cursing to make a lame attempt at comfort. "He's Stephen and he won't allow a gunshot to stop him from finishing paperwork." He took a deep breath. "Let's go to the hospital. Come on."

_D: Discombobulated_

Stephen stood at the door, a sharp, angrily straight line, staring at his hand, which was resting on the doorknob.

_Which way do you turn the fucking knob_ he demanded an answer that his mind refused to give up. It escaped his understanding that perhaps he should try a direction, since he had a fifty percent chance of making the right choice that would open the door and allow him to escape—

"Stephen!"

For his credit, he does manage to jiggle the knob a bit, finding it hard to breathe and hiding it underneath a mask of indifference. Rory skidded to a stop beside him and took in the scene: uniformed Stephen, staring at the door out of the flat as if any second his eyes were about to spout laser beams and burn it down for him.

It's precisely then that she realized that she had no idea what to say. "Um," she tried. "We," she said slowly, and then finally blurted out, "Boo said we could use her room, okay?!"

Stephen glanced at her once and then locked onto the door again. She could almost hear the numbers ticking down in his head as he replaced the image of her in an oversized sweater, hair a private mess, with the image of her panting on the bed, topless, with a similarly topless teenage boy.

"Not again," he finally said. "Okay?"

"Okay," Rory agreed calmly. She tugged on the edge of the sweater she had tugged on as she left the room, which had been in the hallway and so might have been (definitely was) Stephen's, not Boo's.

"Um, if it makes it any better," she said, after Stephen still had not moved beyond worrying the doorknob with one hand, "We weren't actually going to_ do_ anything… the shop down the corner was closed, and Jerome isn't the kind of guy to go around carrying condoms…"

At that, Stephen shoved the door open and took off at a brisk pace (read: sprint) down the walkway. Rory stared after him, and Jerome cautiously poked his head, so wonderfully debauched looking, from Boo's room.

"Your friend's roommate seems… nice," he tried, running one hand through his messy hair. "A little out of it, though."

Rory giggled a bit and walked back down the hallway.

_E: Effortless_

He had forgotten himself.

He stared through the windshield, but didn't see anything beyond it. He didn't watch the street he was near, didn't take notice of the overcast sky; he only imagined his sister sitting next to him, chastising him for doing this, because Rory was Just A Girl and surely he wasn't going to-

_Shut up._

-almost give up his life for the sake of her? Why not call the force? Why not contact Thorpe? Why not at least have Callum and Boo with him? Callum had offered to drive the car!

_I have to do this alone. _His knuckles tightened on the wheel.

You're smart, Stephen. Why don't you see that there is a better way than this? It's crude, it's martyrdom. You'll die.

_Rory will be safe. _His foot hovered above the pedal.

"Rory," he said with a hint of finality, silencing his older sister. She stared at him, her freckled face mixed with regret and concern before fading into nothing, and he could then see Jane Quaint's black car racing towards the entrance to his lane.

"It's for Rory," he elaborated to no-one but himself; and it was with an almost effortless ease that he pressed his foot on the gas.

The police car shot forward like a bullet after the pulling of a trigger; like a body jumping and then hanging from a noose.

* * *

** A, C, E: MythScavenger**

** B, D: Illyria Lives**


	2. F-K

_F: Freak_

Callum dug his fingers into anything that would give way beneath the pressure; it had started with grass, with mud, as he dug his hands into the field where he was practicing football, or, at least, had tried his hardest to practice.

Fingers clawed up hanks of dirt and the roots of weeds as Callum knelt down, eyes begging at the empty goal, and the range of balls scattered around it, some tantalizingly (accidentally, he knew, just lucky) to the net, while others were so far away it made him grit his teeth as his hands made craters in the dirt by his side.

Freak. He was a freak.

His team, what had been his team, was symphathetic, but he didn't want their pity. He didn't want to still be part of the team, as they promised him he would be. He wanted to be on the field like he had dreamed since he was a little boy and his mum bought him a small, junior-sized football. But now he was alone on the field with a heart that wouldn't stop beating out of tune and a goal empty of anything. Everything.

On the street, he kept his eyes low and his hands in his pockets, purposefully not looking up to see any pale women standing on corners, looking out for a car that never came (and never crushed her head in) or men in dated suits that he walked through, shivering, as they paced along the roadway, drifting in and out of a crowd that had no idea what was going on around him. Callum kept his head down, hands in his pockets, pushing and straining, until he hears the sound of the material ripping.

At home his hands found walls, photographs. There was pain, yes, but there was more anger than pain, and the anger made everything nothing more than a movement, an exertion of energy that he would never be able to use on the field with a cheering crowd behind him.

There's glass on the floor and blood on Callum's knuckles as he pants and rages against the brand against him—_freak_—that he'll never be able to escape from, because no one else could see it, feel how wrong he felt in his own body, with arching electricity scars, a freak. The word was heavy in his mouth as Callum stopped his raging for a moment as the doorbell rang.

He didn't want to open it, but he wanted the distraction. On the doorstep is a copper with a face nothing short of aristocratic as he looked up at Callum, who didn't say anything.

The policeman's eyes took in the blood on Callum's hands and his bloodshot eyes before saying, "My name is Stephen Dene. And I have a proposal for you."

_G: Gold_

Everything was tainted noxious, toxic, and was much too bright. Bhuvana – _because she wasn't called Boo yet, because this was Before _– leaned against the bar. She subtly pulled up the front of her revealing top, hiding the edges of a yellow bra, as a stranger leered a bit too close for her liking. She raised a thick and shaped eyebrow in his direction, and he met her silent challenge with a cocky grin.

"Bhu-" Violet stumbled up to her, gravity and the stripper heels that she had gotten half-priced turning against her. "Bhuvana, I am drunk." She stated this dryly, a hundred percent sure of the fact. Bhuvana warily watched the man appreciatively examine Violet from top to bottom, his gaze lingering on the assets.

She collected her thoughts, feeling as if she was casting a hopeless line out to vestigial fish, and quickly guided a compliant Violet away (something about being an effing tease following her). She managed to cut a clear path through the pulsing, throbbing, multitude of forever young youths and older adults trying to make alcohol outlast the sorrow.

Outside, the flashing lights were yellow, burnt ember, and gold as they left the suffocating air of the club. "I'm going to..be sick.."

"Nah," Bhuvana said as she directed Violet to the car. "Now give me the keys. You're sleeping over at Brendan's, aren't you?"

Violet frowned. Bhuvana wondered if her friend's fish were nonexistent. "Um…I think so..? But let me," she took a deep breath, her face flushed, "drive."

"No-"

"It'smycar.." Her voice was more slurred in the open air, and Bhuvana attempted to calculate the distance. Was her house closer or was Brendan's? Brendan's was. And Violet had gotten her license before she had. So allow Violet to drive. Violet driving would be a good thing.

"All right." Against her better judgment, she got in shotgun, and leaned her head back on the headrest. Violet maneuvered inside, stripper heels in hand, a few seconds after.

The next thing, the only thing, her mind could recall next was that everything was bright yellow, gold. Her head hurt. Another head was lolling near hers, black hair a curtain painted red.

"Vi…" Bhuvana peered close. "Viol…" She squinted and tried to make everything not so fuzzy, not so blurry, not so distant. What had been slipped into her drinks? It must've been that bastard from the bar..

"C'mon, dear. You've had a fright."

Bhuvana turned her head, wincing at the pain, and, through the broken car window, saw a kindly woman dressed in what could've only been a bizarre World War II costume.

_H: Hallelujah_

Stephen had never been overly religious.

His family was technically Christian, and when pressed his parents would summon up the word Protestant and sling it around like it somehow saved their souls, to be capable of attaching a word to the reason why they exchanged gifts at Christmas (left gifts for their kids while they caught the early flight to the Bahamas) and dyed eggs at Easter (left their kids to dye eggs with the nanny while they went to a brunch with business friends). But no, Stephen had only been sparingly inside of a church, for The Funeral and for the marriages of even more business friends, sitting stiffly in the pew next to his parents, mind empty.

Stephen was a bit bothered by how he wasn't sure what part of the Lord's Prayer came first, the trespassing part or the deliverance from evil part, but he really never thought about it until he left the room with Rory inside, she still sitting as she had been when he had kissed her.

_ He had kissed her._

Stephen had never been very religious, but he was struck with the insatiable urge to praise God or Allah or some higher power that had given him the gene for the Sight, which had given him his first ghost, who had put the chair back under his feet, because if not for that string of events he never would have ended where he should.

He leaned his head back along the headrest of the armchair in the living room, eyes drifting close as he tried to remember some sort of prayer, some form-letter like way to thank the universe and any Creator that might exist. Send up a more controlled Hallelujah, somehow. He devotes a section of his dimming mind to finding the words.

He makes it to the part about trespassing before falling darkly asleep.

_I: Ill_

She wanted to cry.

It wasn't that the flu was pneumonia (which apparently all three Shades had suffered from once at one point or another), or cancer (both Callum and Boo had known someone who had not beaten it. Stephen had refused to contribute to the discussion.).

But it was going to be a long autumn, and she had been in London for almost a year; and ghosts were beginning to crop up more than usual, and Rory was only a teenage terminus who needed to think about college.

Not sick _adult_ friends who were _adults_ and should've been able to do the _adult_ thing and take care of themselves.

"Rory?" croaked Boo as she walked into the kitchen, swaddled in a thick plaid robe that was either Callum's or Stephen's. Rory was going to bet that it was the former's, though with the flat strewn with clothes ("It's too hot!" "Stephen, damn it, it's sixty degrees in here! Strip if you have to!"), you never knew. "Is the soup-?"

"It's coming-" She was interrupted by the beeping of the microwave. Her hands reached for the handle-

"Ror?" The kitchen was of reasonable size, but now it was only becoming nothing short of crowded as Callum squeezed past his girlfriend. "Stephen needs the cough syrup, and-" he was interrupted by a bout of distant coughing. "See?"

"Then give him the damn cough syrup!" Rory snapped as she removed the hot bowl from the microwave, almost dropping it onto the counter. "Damn it-"

"But you know how he is!" Callum retorted, wiping at his nose with his sleeve, as Boo smoothly took the bowl from the girl's hands and whispered a hoarse thanks. "He acts as if he's invincible!" A trail of mucus began to stream down his nose, and Rory had gotten so used to the sight of the omnipresent snot that she didn't wince. However, this did not stop Boo from gesturing wiping her nose with one hand as she passed by him.

Rory sighed. "We had to practically spoon-feed him last time, I know, I know." (This was a song that had been stuck on repeat for the last two weeks.) She turned to the counter and picked up a worn spoon and a bottle half-filled with the thick cherry-flavored medicine. "Where is he?"

_J: Jealousy_

She watched him walking down the street, talking urgently to a girl by his side. His hands moved restlessly, and her eyes traveled over them as she paid attention to his speech. Behind them walked another boy and girl pair, each with darker skin, who were arguing over something. He turned around and cut them off, not unlike a father of a nuclear (God above knows that her family had never been anything close once past the surface) family on a long roadtrip. The father of a pair of ne'er-do-wells who sent each other glares once they were back in step. He continued to talk to the girl by his side, and her smile was a bit more than friendly.

Although she is not used to being talked to, she does know that this particular building roof is home to Agnes, a woman who had worked here when it was still a factory, and several stories higher, sometime in the late 1890s. The floor Agnes had died on was now the roof, and the chatty woman loved a good talk, especially to people who didn't seem to be paying attention.

"Why, there you are, love," Agnes chattered, materializing. She looked down over her shoulder, to the roadway below. "Oh, that's your boy, eh? Why, he seems to have gotten himself a new lady." Agnes's eyes traveled over her with worry. "You jealous, love?"

Caroline smiled down at her brother, walking towards Goodwin's Court with his new family—not quite nuclear, but somehow better—and answered.

"No," she said, "I'm actually not."

_K: Knight_

Boo would never admit it to anyone – hell would be frozen over before she even spoke it aloud to a mirror – but she was still scared shitless.

She still dreamed about crashing into the billboard, about Violet's once-pretty, once-not-dead face, and about being thrown onto the street like a piece of human trash. Disposable. Easily forgotten, easily broken. "Handle with care" was a sign that should've been hung around her neck.

After the Ripper, it got to the point that she could not sleep, and she'd just stare up at the ceiling on the couch (when she slept over at Callum and Stephen's) or on her bed (the few nights when she didn't).

She'd hear Stephen and Rory down the hallway, whispering about the inner-workings of the Shades.

She'd watch Callum get up to get a glass of water ("Can't sleep?" "No." She caught him casting a worried look to her before entering his bedroom).

At one point, she saw Stephen and Rory leave the flat so the latter could be snuck back into Wexford like a smuggled jewel. Stephen kept his hand on the small of her back, ducking down to hear her.

And all she could think of was of Stephen and the insulin, Rory being ripped by the Ripper, Jo being terminated by a terminus, and Violet being killed by a bad decision.

So when she finally had Enough of This Shit, she dared herself to crawl into Callum's bed. And he mutely wrapped his arms around her, because he Knew, and he might as well have been a Knight.

* * *

**G, I, K: MythScavenger**

**F, H, J: Illyria Lives**


	3. L-Q

_L: Louisiana_

"What's it like?"

The sudden line of speech makes Rory jump a bit from where she was sitting on the ground, cross-legged, trying to pay attention to her textbook for more than two consecutive seconds in the Wexford Library. Alistair had materialized on the ground beside her, The Distance away.

Upon her return, Rory had set down an un-elaborated on law that Alistair remain at least one yard-long bookcase away at all times she was near. Before, it had comforted her. Now, with the young man not looking at her, arms resting on knees he didn't have, it just makes them both look lonely.

"What's what like?" she asked, setting the book aside and sitting to face him.

"America. Where you're from, I guess." His answer is short and he does not look at her.

Rory can't help but smile as all her stories of home come to the front of her mind. "Louisiana."

"Yeah."

"It's… different from here," she finally said. "It's warm all year round, at least when it's not raining or storming—"

"I've seen storms," Alistair broke in, "Tell me about the warmth."

She describes pools of yellow sunlight on blinding cement; of humid green canopies of vines and trees, of the water in pools being so warm that swimming was like swimming through the air. She told him about summers that were heavy, like a coat thrown over bare, sun browned shoulders. Eventually her descriptions of hair-curling humidity, the air so thick you could feel it moving into your lungs, fade. Alistair still does not look at her.

"I never really got out of London," he says to the wall across the way, "Lived downtown, attended Wexford. Always wet and rainy, at least to me. I had wanted to go somewhere sunny, where there wasn't any dampness, any fog. I wanted it like nothing else."

The past tense of the sentence is like a slap to the face.

"Alistair…"

"Guess I'll know what heaven looks like when I find it in these dusty books," he said bluntly, "it'll be a lot like Louisiana."

Rory wants to reach out a hand to comfort him, lift him out of the darkness that had invaded his voice, but she couldn't.

She could only watch, a safe distance away, as his eyes went unfocused, and imagined Louisiana.

_M: Magic_

She sat cross-legged on the bed; working on what Rory had endearingly called a sweater for a snake. The girl paused, the blue tube now well over four feet long, and glanced at the other bed.

It was now just a stripped mattress and a few pillows: a neon sign that alerted Julianne Benton of A VACANCY every time her gaze landed on it. And no matter how many times she averted her eyes, or attempted to give her train of thought a detour, Rory's absence was starkly…there.

"Jazza?" A tentative knocking. "There's a letter for you." Silence. "I'm just, er, going to slide it under the door, okay?"

"Wait – Jerome –" she got up and sprinted to the – for the time being, just hers - door. She opened it to see the curly-haired boy walking away. "Jerome!" He paused and turned, and she noticed how red the corners of his eyes were. Instead of wincing, positive that her own eyes were similar, she looked down to see a letter that had JAZZA written on it in a familiar, loopy print.

"It's from Rory," he wiped at his nose. "I, ah, I got one, as well." The corner of a white envelope stuck out of his trousers pocket.

"But there's no post on Sundays."

"Andrew saw some random bloke insert them into my box."

"Oh."

Jerome nodded and shuffled his feet. "Do you think she's all right?" He took a deep breath before Jazza could think of a response that did not include a verbal smash of words, or letters, or just spontaneous, high-keening sounds. "She befriended us, and then left. I want to know why."

"You know Rory. She has her ways. She'll be fine." She attempted to sound offhand, as if Rory was simply gone for the weekend, and not considered a Runaway, a Missing Person, or a Best Friend MIA.

He proceeded to duck his head down, curly hair hiding his eyes from view. "Despite…everything that happened between us..I miss her."

"Me, too." Jazza bent down to pick up the envelope. No return address.

Rory Deveaux had simply pulled a disappearing act. It was a genuine sleight of hand. And now she needed to reveal to Jazza and Jerome her magician's tricks; or, better yet, return to the stage.

Show's over. Close the curtain. Smile for the cameras.

_N: No_

It's supposed to be poetic.

There's supposed to be some grand climactic finish, a final arm wave, one final smile as the cameras go wild, everyone in the world locked with fascination on your disappearing act.

_ No._

It's supposed to be sudden.

There's supposed to be a moment of breathlessness, hovering at the top of the rollercoaster's mighty drop, as the music cuts to a stop instead of a slow bleed. The orchestra being conducted with puppet strings fading a stop that you want to avoid, want to run from. It is the sound of the horizon closing in.

_ No…_

It's supposed to be peaceful.

There's supposed to be a bit of acceptance (there had been some, before, but it was gone; fresh acceptance was needed here) as the light comes out, takes everything in and lets it out with one final exhalation as the rollercoaster dropped and the music ended, the magician's stage empty. The audience claps. Instruments are packed away. Hope you enjoyed the show.

_ NO—_

It's supposed to be all of these things. It isn't.

It's hard and it's painful, more painful than before, he can feel the thick drudge of blood clawing its way behind his eyes, in his head, he can feel the shooting pains down every available piece of skin, of bone, and it's slow, it's magma in his veins, in his eyes, and although he wants to be brave, wants to find that old acceptance, he can't. All he can do is shout towards nothing,

_ NO NO NO NO NO NO I WILL NOT GO._

Helping him out in his empty cries is the screaming of machines gone flat with the beating of his heart, now gone.

Helping him stay is a bright white light clinging to his hand.

Stephen Dene held onto Rory Deveaux not for dear life, but something close.

He does not go. He remains on stage, disappearance still in progress, he is at the top arc of the rollercoaster's downwards descent, his arms are raised and the orchestra awaits his final command.

And instead of letting it end, he looks out to the audience held in waiting for so many years for the day the show would finally be finished.

He exits the stage.

_O: Old_

Stephen was old.

Not in body. He was young _though I feel as if I have lived a million years_, thick black hair far from being streaked with grey _but God knows it might as well be_, and his eyesight could've been worse _my glasses shield me_.

He was old in mind, in his conscious that Would Not Cease to Think. However, he could only be a Samson and an Atlas _I'm just nineteen _for so long.

For Rory, in that police car, had sweetly cut his hair with a pair of heaven-sent scissors; and the submerged fact that revealed _I'm not Stone and I'm not Invincible_, and _I'm Flesh and Bone_ rose to the surface.

She had grinned and crouched next to him and assisted him _Rory you weren't supposed to_ with this heavy world that rested on his pale and once-alone shoulders.

That night, _I can breathe again._

_P: Police Car_

It was a brand new when it came into the possession of a new owner;_ issued_ owner being the correct terminology, paint unscratched and seats freshly pressed. A new car for a new police officer, a young man with an aristocratic look and a pair of well-shaped eyeglasses. The young man circled the car with a thoughtful look, tapping his toe at the tires and checking under the hood, not with the air of someone doing a chore that needed to be done, but almost in a fascinated manner. He checked all the proper wiring (of course it was good; the police car was _new_) before sliding into the seat (the first man to take the seat; his weight settled comfortably and easily) and starting the engine.

It is the first driver the car had ever had. And he was a fine one.

Along with the usual police business, siren blazing and corners lurching (the new officer was a good driver; his hands never wavered as he made turns, and his foot on the gas pedal was soft but firm), there were others.

There was the young woman, in the backseat, legs sweaty with fear. Her hands grabbed at the seat, clawed at it, filled the divots with horrible urgency, with commitment that had never gotten close to the back seat of the car before.

There were the words sent back and forth in the car, from front to back, dead words about dead things, scared words and angered words. There was emotion that the new car had never been exposed to before; nothing that any police car had ever been exposed to before.

There was fear, sharp and tangible. There was warmth, loyalty, understanding. There was anger, driven into the steering wheel (it had never been struck before, never by an officer, by _anyone_) by fists as the officer choked down softer emotions as the girl, again sitting in the back, with another officer in the passenger seat, stared ahead, resolute.

There was sadness as the owner (because it was not an assignment, it was a connection, it was ownership, the car was, would always be, _his_) told a story to the girl, his equal in the passenger seat. He did not look at her. She looked at him, a long while, and then she spoke and the car was alight with bright colors and an emotion not meant to be felt in police cars (not quite love, not quite affection, something else, something worse but somehow better) floods every inch.

The girl exits.

So does the owner.

The police car is taken back to the station by another man, another officer, (by no means the _owner_, no, not even close. He sticks the gears and never shifts and he even lights a cigarette) and left there for days, for weeks. When the owner, the _true_ owner returns, he is quiet and still and mostly unchanged, if emptied of the colors and emotions he had spilled out previously. He does his job as before, siren blazing, curling tightly around the corners, hands gripping the wheel in a businesslike manner, foot firm but gentle on the pedal as he gains speed.

One day he enters the car and it is different. He is calm like a stone wall, like a ship heading into a storm.

He idles in the alleyway for half a minute, waiting, watching through the windshield that had never been cracked, never seen a bullet, his spine growing stiff as the emotions in the car, in the backseat, pushed and prodded at him. He sees the front fender of another car enter an adjacent road to the alley, and with a bright burst of color, of emotions that could have cracked the windshield, if they had been tangible—

He steps on the gas.

Two minutes later the police car is no more.

_Q: Quiet_

The policeman sighs as he walks up the stairs, his footfalls heavy. When he reaches the flat's door, it takes all of his self-control to not simply slide his tall frame to the ground and _sleep_ until Callum or someone familiar arrives.

He tries to insert the key into the lock, but his shaking hand makes the task more difficult. He breathes in deeply, attempting to steady himself and the mind that is racing, racing, racing. He is staring down that boathouse, looking for that beam, tying that rope. He has been doing so for the last two or three years.

The key finally fits, unlocking the door (like he had accidentally unlocked the old closet in his mind and released those cursed skeletons), and he steps through. His legs, he feels, are barely keeping him upright.

"Stephen, is that you-?" Rory peers upwards over the edge of the couch. Her eyes widen as he maintains her gaze, daring her to question him right now, even though she knows What Happened all those ages ago and is foolish enough to believe that He Is Not Crazy. She says his name again, and something inside of him wants her to keep saying it, to remind him that he is Stephen Dene and-

"I'm fine," he says, the exhale of relief from coming home catching in his throat. But all he sees now are the flat – boathouse - keys flashing in suicidal teenage hands.

She says that he is not fine as she leaves her spot on the couch and takes his hand. "What happened?"

He wants to whip his hand away - both of hers are now enveloping his - but he's shaking so badly; and she is an anchor for him right now, even if he does not want her to be.

Her eyes search his face, not looking for a chink in his armor to slip a verbal sword through, like his peers would've, but more for something she can fix or heal or sew back together. And he wants to tell her that she can't, that he is not repairable, that he is three eternities too old for her to care like this, but he doesn't.

And then, she finds the gap, the ripped tear in him, and a look of understanding crosses her face.

"I can't fix tea," she tries to make him smile, "but I'll fix you some soup? Maybe?" He dumbly nods, reduced to a lost child, and she leads him to the worn couch.

It takes a while for the quiet to seep in, but then she begins to run her fingers through his thick hair with his tired head in her lap; and he wants to cry, to bawl and wail like he's never been allowed to, but those tears have been restrained for so long that it is second nature to them to not be released.

When Rory goes to call Jerome that, _No, she can't make it to their date, a friend is having trouble, he needs her, _Stephen is nostalgic for something he never had, longing for something that he thinks he does not deserve.

* * *

**M, O, Q: MythScavenger**

**L, N, P: Illyria Lives **


	4. R-V

_R: Rules_

Thorpe tried to walk away, but he only made it several steps before he is forced to stop by the blindness overcoming his vision. He mopped at his eyes with one hand, leaning the other against the textured hospital walls.

_Can't stop walking now_, he told himself. _Can't let this one get to me_.

There were rules concerning his job, his life. Rules such as Ask No Questions, and Fear No Evil, but the number one rule, not officially, but personally to him, was Do Not Get Attatched.

It had been made very clear to him—he had made it very clear to _himself_—that Shades came and went like tides. Rushing over everything, sweeping up the debris in their path, washing over it and hiding it in foam and rushing water, only to be ripped back out to sea, leaving a jumbled mess in their wake.

He would not be someone else's mess.

Thorpe wiped away at his eyes until his vision was clear, and then he made his way down to the lobby of the hospital, where, by some psychic nurse powers, everyone walking past him in scrubs gave him the same look of pity and understanding. Damn their pity and damn their understanding. Damn them all for being blind. God damn everything under His yellow sun; everyone was blind.

Thorpe stopped in the hospital gift shop, staring down a row of flowers wrapped in plastic. Beside them, a rack of cards. For one horrible second Thorpe considered both; ignoring the Rules for long enough for the remembrance to strike him like a blow to the face. He went blind again.

As he rubbed at his eyes with angry hands, he reminded himself over and over again. There were Rules for a reason. There were Shades for a reason. The job needed to be done, had to be done, by someone. A dangerous job. A dangerous job settled on the shoulders of someone so young…

Thorpe had chosen Stephen for a reason. The boy was a leader, well taught, and dedicated, even as he sat at the interview table in pale sweatpants and a matching shirt, a bruise like a brand across his throat, with an orderly waiting nearby in case the young man came too close to anything he could use as a weapon against himself. Thorpe had sat across from Stephen, a one man representative of a part of the government that didn't exist, and offered the boy another chance to die.

"Are you alright, sir?" a young woman, the storekeeper, asked him.

Thorpe sniffed louder than he would have liked to admit and squared his shoulders. "I'm fine," he said, leaving the displays of cards of flowers behind.

His decision. His choice to take Stephen in, and even now he couldn't let the boy go, let the American girl hold his hand as the others watching and raged and wept. What could Thorpe do now but walk away with some of his dignity intact? He would hold on to the Rules for as long as possible.

Besides; what could he have done? Flowers were for the dead; cards, for the living.

There was nothing there for Stephen, anymore.

_S: Sound_

(He is nonexistent.)

The blood is sludging along in his head, as if in a drain filled with the murkiest and thickest of waste; and this is not a simile, this is not a lie, because his mind is ceasing to think and it might as well be a sewer, a drain, a thing where the forgotten and dirty things go.

He feels dead, which he somehow knows in this hanging suspension of nonexistence, he will soon be.

Because he is not sound of mind, and he is hearing voices, sweet sweet voices, whose vibrations he can barely catch. His heartbeat is sounding like a gong, and a fading one at that.

And he just wants to hear Callum going on about paperwork one more time; suffer through Boo pumping her music much too loudly once more; and replay Rory saying that he is not crazy to her. They were his family,_ they are his family_, bounded by the Sight and whatever other lots they've been cast.

(He wonders if it is not too late to pray to some higher power, to finally use Protestant as a lifeline, and not as a word that his parents threw around at cocktail parties.)

The sewer is becoming clogged. His thoughts are becoming vestigial fish that he cannot throw a line to, and proceed to melt into a thief that gets away in the hazy, hazy dawn.

And yet he still yearns for something big, something major, as he sits there or lies there or simply nonexists there, in that big, major space of suspension. He yearns to feel his sister's hug – _because she always hugged you as if you were never ever going to return, except, the last time she hugged him, it was her doing the never ever returning_ – and to kiss Rory one final time – _because it was an intimacy he had long given up on knowing, had believed he had not deserved, but now, oh, now_ - and to hear Callum and Boo bickering - _because he knows that they love him and, God, how he loves them in turn._

Because you never know what you have until it's gone.

(There is a flash of light tinged with the sweet and bitter taste of regret, and then his sister - _Caroline_ - is hugging him, her petite frame against his tall one, and he hears her saying "Welcome home."

"But home is the flat," he says, confused. Numb._ Home is Boo and Callum. Home is Rory_.

And he hears words coming from her mouth, words about how sorry she is and how she missed him and how she is so proud of him, and he hears the screaming of a machine when a flatline occurs, and he hears his life halting, the brakes squealing like the ones he never pressed dashing out of that lane.)

_T: Taste_

If there's one thing the propaganda doesn't tell you about speedballs, it's that you can_ taste_ it. Injection is the most used method, so you wouldn't even think about it getting in your mouth at all, but you can still taste it. Smoking it was dangerous and ruined the taste, the high it brought, the perfect mix of heroin and cocaine to get you There—some mythical, magical Nirvana where nothing mattered at all anymore. When you were high, you were above all your problems, punching a hole through the heavy sky.

Caroline loved the taste of a good speeder, the sound of wind that wasn't there whispering in her ear as she flew. It tasted like freedom, strait euphoria. Better than chocolate. Better than the sweet taste of someone else's mouth, tangled together in the sheets. Speedballs were better than anything her shit parents had ever given her, aside from her little brother Stephen, and even then Caroline was proud of the fact that she was only occasionally sure that her parents had been involved in his creation at all. He had martyr's eyes.

But this time something is different.

She reaches the high, the highest high, the pain in her arm forgotten for a time, but instead of coasting down she keeps on going, straight through the stratosphere. The oxygen grows thin in her lungs and her limbs begin to go cold. There's too much, too much of a perfect thing, and it's the best way she's ever thought of dying, even though she didn't know she was dying, she didn't know how her heart was stopping and stuttering, how she was drenched in sweat and her own acidic vomit; all she knew was that her mouth tasted like blood.

All she knew was that it was better than anything.

_U: Unknown_

Callum Mitchell does not like ghosts, which is the most simplistic and no-cursing phrase possible.

His leg is a phantom limb that he still has; what, with he wanting it to work properly, but his nerves persisting, saying _No, we refuse, you stupid bastard._ He still maintains a small fear of puddles, and of live wires. Dead wires. That long cord that belongs to the unreasonably tall lamp Stephen is - Stephen was - too stubborn to get rid of.

And now his little Shade family - with a buy-two-screwed-up-adults-get-one-free-American-gi rl deal - is missing a screwed up not-a-wanker-but-just-a-little-special-sometimes Stephen. All because of some deranged _cult_.

Might even go so far as to say it all started with a copycat Ripper, because without him - it - whatever, they would not be stuck with - would not know - Rory. And Rory would not be a human terminus, and then the cult wouldn't be after Rory and the Shades, but primarily Rory, and then Stephen would be Not Dead.

Callum wants ghosts to burn, wants them to feel what that poor bastard at the estate took away from him, and he thought that he would never feel anything different. (No matter what Boo said about Jo - who, Callum admits, was pretty decent for a ghost. Not that he'd ever let Boo know.)

Ghosts are the Unknown. The Things That Even Stephen Does - Did - Not Know Everything About. They're the Bad, and Callum's one true consistent enemy.

He never thought that he'd feel anything to the contrary, until a ghost that resembles Stephen - black fashionable glasses, so skinny that once Boo and Callum actually tried to make him eat seconds, thirds, anything, police garb - stood before him in Goodwin's Court. But it could not possibly be Stephen, because Stephen was too good, too not-a-wanker-but-just-a-little-special-sometimes, to become one of Them.

_V: Vindicated_

The first thing is not something Stephen wants to see, or expects to see.

On one hand he could have seen all the mythical signs of Paradise: a few flowing rivers, men and women floating about in togas and stroking harps; or even a less literal definition of at least some happiness wrapped up in a land that he could feel at home in. There was the slim chance that not quite committing suicide still counted as suicide and instead he would open his eyes to somewhere searingly hot and uncomfortable, but he doesn't see either.

There's something like a room that he's in, and it's bright, but not with light. He can't focus on any real space, and is aware only vaguely that the area was filled with jostling bodies, some going to the right, some to the left, and some forward.

Stephen was tugged forward by his hand by an unseen force, away from the left or the right lines, and as he does so he passes by a man fighting the flow to the left, fighting and screaming and cursing all the way. His body glowed with violent light.

He is the one thing that Stephen can focus on; and his eyes lock onto the younger man's as well.

The Ripper smiled at him and seemed to give up his fight, understanding something that Stephen could not.

"I was right," the Ripper called out, laughing, "it worked!" But then Stephen was pulled away as the painful but triumphant laughter of the Ripper continued, to the door on the left, which seemed very hot indeed.

* * *

**S, U: MythScavenger**

**R, T, V: Illyria Lives**


	5. W-Z

_W: Winter_

"I told you that you shouldn't have gone out a few days ago," Stephen stated matter-of-factly, flipping through his book.

Rory glared as she reached for another tissue. "I-" she began, but was quickly cut off with a sneeze that was the equivalent of a tug boat. Stephen winced, pausing on the beginning of, what Rory saw, was chapter twenty-two. "I'll be fine," she retorted, voice slightly nasal. "Thanks for asking."

Stephen's offhandedness, dare she admitted it to herself, annoyed her. _He_ was used to the London winter cold, _he _wasn't the one a sniffling, snotty mess on the couch, and he most certainly was_ not_ the one who had argued with Jazza earlier and had unintentionally kicked aforementioned Jazza out of their room (for the time being).

She threw the used tissue into the conveniently placed trash can near the couch, and, lying down, turned away from him. She reached behind her for the blanket, which was suddenly pushed into her hands.

"Do you need cough syrup or-"

"I'm not coughing. I'm as stuffed up as hell."

"I told you that you should not have gone out without a jacket," he said again. She could feel him looking down at her as she pulled the blanket over her. _Don't look up, don't look up.._

"Should I take you to the doctor?" he asked, his voice actually sounding a bit concerned.

Rory was tempted to play it up a notch, to get him worried, to amuse herself because she was very bored; but she knew that that would just make her out to be even more of a bitchweasel, because she had actually dumped herself onto Stephen's hands thanks to walking into his flat, very unannounced, very mad, and very sick.

He gingerly sat down, him against the crook of her legs, and she stared at the couch. Puffy material was seeping out of the cracked leather and tickling her stuffed nose. He softly placed a hand on her Eton-sweatpants clad knee. "Rory?"

She had been so mad.

But now, she was just tired.

"I should go apologize," she began, starting to get up. Stephen's hand hesitantly moved to her shoulder. "I - I should go find Jazza, yeah, go find Jazza and we'll go to that sandwich place…" He tried to meet her gaze. "It's a shitty sandwich place, but still a sandwich place, and then I'll apologize again and beg for forgiveness…"

"Rory?"

"And then we'll speak of how winter is a cruel mistress," she made to move from the couch, but Stephen grabbed her hand.

"You're sick."

"No shit, Sherlock," she said, looking at him. "And I need to go apologize to Jazza because she's my best friend, and best friends don't act like bitchweasels toward each other."

"At least let me drive you. I don't know how you managed to get here by yourself."

_X: Xanadu_

_ In Xanadu did Kubla Khan_

_ A stately pleasure-dome decree :_

_ Where Alph, the sacred river, ran_

_ Through caverns measureless to man_

_ Down to a sunless sea._

Alistair ruffled the pages of the English Poetry book restlessly, bored at what could be his hundredth reading of the erotically worded poem; it was as if any mentioning of pleasure domes immediately drove whoever was reading it away, leaving the book open behind them.

Or, if not running off, it ran them to someone else, if the tangle of limbs beneath the table was anything to do by. All his old Wexford mates would have gone positively batty to had they been informed during their tenure in Aldshot what they were missing out on in the single-sex campus.

Alistair ducked his head under the table to catch a voyeuristic look. The redhead prefect was macking on what Alistair could have sworn was the geeky brunette's beau… now, what had been her name…? Ja-something. As their maneuvers intensified the young ghost wisely chose to look away, unwilling to become a pervert at his age. Whatever the hell that added up to, ghost years included.

Kubla Khan had it right to set aside a special place (almost an Eden, of a less (or was it more?) healthy purpose) for pleasure. Alistair could see it now, spreading beyond the edge of the claustrophobic library that he knew all the ups and downs of; a dome of willfully bending flowers, shining sun, rivers that sang and caverns that begged exploring.

Alistair was suddenly keenly aware of the motions taking place near his ghostly feet and if he had been capable of blushing, his face would have been aflame as he hastily beat his exit.

For some emperors, Xanadu had to be made. For others, it was just across the way from their dorm, surrounded by dusty books and teenaged ghosts.

_Y: Youthful_

Stephen watched from afar as Boo and Rory talked excitedly with exaggerated hand motions and humongous grins on their faces. It was as if they were plotting, plotting something grand, and something that he'd never have a part in.

At one point, Rory looked past him, her gaze narrowing on a point behind him, before focusing on Boo once more.

Stephen knew many things. He knew that Rory still hated what she believed she had not been able to do; that she hated the fact that she had not managed to save him. He knew that it was her sore spot: the wound that refused to stop bleeding, to scab, to heal. That she blamed herself.

(It was Callum who would have hated what he might have become the most.)

Still, something made him feel guilty. It was_ almost_ nice, a horrible nice, to be remembered in such a fashion. To know that he made an impact. To know that maybe, just maybe, she might have loved him in the way he her.

(He knows she remembers him because he sits outside her door and listens. Because she talks. To him.)

At that moment, Rory looked as if she had eaten stars – stars that now shined from her eyes and from her mouth. The past years have done her well, he could not ever help noticing: cheekbones a bit more noticeable, hair lush, and a smile so wide it made his nonexistent stomach twist. That kind of invincibility given to people once they reached early adulthood.

(She was older than his eternal nineteen years now.)

She turned to walk inside, waving good-bye to Boo, and he followed. He was as devoted as a monk, as lovesick as a teenager, and the dark side to the wish of being forever young.

_Z: Zeal_

It's a wildfire, all-consuming. It sparks in the stomach, consumes the lungs, smolders along the ribs. It's physical, surprisingly physical, not the most pleasant thing for Detective Inspector Walter Andrews to feel, but surely not the worst thing he had ever felt, not since he had almost died two days prior thanks to a gas line stuffing up his bedroom as his wife slept beside him.

The light that surely had scorched his insides, possibly leaking from his mouth like the flames of a dragon, was born from fear, but then it became something else. Something less terrifying, something with more of a… push.

"Do you see her?" he grabbed at fellow inspector Henry Moore's arm.

"See who?" the other Whitechapel man asked, looking in the direction that Walter had been pointing.

"Her. That woman, why, she could be Ms. Chapman's twin, they are so similar."

Inspector Moore wrinkled his nose. "How anyone could resemble that gruesome picture is behind me, especially since you're pointing at an empty wall. Let's get on, make another round with the interviews." He began to walk away.

"You don't… you do not see her? She is standing there plain as day!" the woman looked over at him with a frightened but also kindly expression.

Moore scoffed something about long hours and took off without him, leaving Walter behind to stare at the woman.

"… you can see me, then, copper?" she asked in a wavering voice that was not quite all there, "Bloody good that'll do me now, you and half a dozen others looking at me now when it don't matter… it don't matter…" her eyes grew unfocused.

That was when the fire started.

Others. Half a dozen others. Bloody Apron's latest victim, Annie Chapman, looking as if an errant breeze would knock her over… even as a butcher walked straight through her.

Others. Others. A fire, a spark, a wildfire.

"Where've you been?" the head inspector for the Whitechapel killings demanded when Walter finally returned.

"Staring at walls all day, our Mr. Andrews," Moore quipped. Walter did his best to duck his head and become something unnoticed.

He did his best to become a shadow, but still the energy burned away inside him.

* * *

**W, Y: MythScavenger**

**X, Z: Illyria Lives**

**Thanks for reading!**


End file.
